


Part 1: Knickers

by kw20742



Series: Something Like Love [2]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, Explicit Language, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 01:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15353661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kw20742/pseuds/kw20742
Summary: Scene continuation from episode 2.1, immediately after Jocelyn tells Mark and Beth that she won’t take their brief.





	Part 1: Knickers

**Author's Note:**

> Scene continuation from episode 2.1, immediately after Jocelyn tells Mark and Beth that she won’t take their brief.

Jocelyn cuts short her afternoon walk, already ruined by the grieving Latimers in any case. Slippery sand gives way to crushed shells, then to gravel and, finally, hard black pavement under her trainers as she marches in a raging fury directly from the beach. She hardly notices that her progress is unusually unencumbered; her palpable wrath has parted the human swarm of townsfolk and tourists who are enjoying their sunny spring day. She shoves open the front door of the _Broadchurch_ _Echo_ ’s new harbourside office, and, putting a hand over her eyes to shield them from the artificial lighting, spots the target of her ire on the floor at the back of the small newsroom.

Maggie is on her knees, rummaging through a low corner cupboard on what has thus far been a futile hunt for printer toner, when she hears a disembodied voice bark ominously from behind her, “Maggie Radcliffe! What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at?”

Startled, Maggie manages to hit the crown of her head—hard—on the cupboard frame. “Fuck!” She presses her palm to the sore spot as she extracts herself from the depths of said cupboard and picks all her limbs up off the floor. Still rubbing the top of her head, she lets out an exasperated sigh and rolls her eyes. Jocelyn.

“Don’t you give me that look,” Jocelyn spits.

Ice blue meets flinty slate as the two women, giants in their respective fields and each practiced masters of self-possession, glare silently at each other. A great row is brewing.

But this is Maggie’s turf, and if she’s about to get a bollocking from Jocelyn Knight, it’s certainly not going to be in front of her staff. Her raised eyebrows, pursed lips, and clenched jaw dare Jocelyn to utter even One. More. Word. She does a quick sweep of the four pairs of stunned eyes and ears (Olly, his mum, the UPS bloke, and some poor tourist asking if they’ve got a toilet she can use) that have thus far observed this blistering encounter and commands her guest: “My office. Now.”

Marginally contrite (if their places were reversed, Jocelyn wouldn’t tolerate her behavior either) but without conceding the high ground, Jocelyn trudges persistently up the stairs after Maggie, who shuts the door behind them.

Reaching over and behind her guest for the cord, Maggie draws down the blinds on the wide window that lets her see down into her newsroom below. She silently hopes the walls to this new office are thick enough to absorb the imminent sounds of Jocelyn’s wrath, while working hard not to notice that her wind-blown hair smells of lavender.

Maggie turns to face her fate. “Beth and Mark found you, then.” It isn’t a question.

“I told you no, Maggie,” Jocelyn pronounces in that slow, deliberate way. “I was very clear. But you went right ahead and encouraged them anyway.” It was almost a betrayal, Maggie letting the Latimers in on where, what time, and how best to find her. When she would be the least prepared for such an emotional onslaught. “What gives you the right to tell people about my private life?”

“The beach is a public place,” Maggie retorts.

“Oh, and they just happen to know when and where I take my walks, do they?”

Maggie knows she may have crossed a line. A thin, wavy one, to be sure, but Jocelyn is such a stickler for privacy. Boundaries. Compartments. She's always been impressed by Jocelyn’s ability to cordon off certain parts of her life from others. But her strength in this regard is, as Maggie knows all too well, also her weakness.

“Oh, for goodness sake, Jocelyn,” Maggie exclaims, “I’m sorry. I really am. But it’s not like they rummaged around in your knicker drawer!”

“No,” Jocelyn retorts, “it’s as if you did and then told them what you found.”

Maggie snorts derisively, and flops into her comfy roller chair, pretty much the only piece of furniture that made the move from the old office. The walloping she took from that cupboard has brought on a dull headache, so she dives into her desk drawer for the painkillers. She’s also trying to avoid eye contact with Jocelyn for fear that she’ll guess that the movie at the back of Maggie’s mind is currently stuck on what she might actually find in that drawer. Lace? Silk? Toys? Oh, for fuck’s sake. After all this time? What is she, a prepubescent boy?

She chases two red capsules with the now-lukewarm coffee she left on her desk to run downstairs. For what? Printer ink. Which wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Why those corporate big shots at head office decided it was a good idea to layoff most of her staff, cut her budget, and move house on the eve of the Miller trial remains an irritating and inconvenient mystery. But there it is.

Embarrassed by the reference—two, now—to her undergarments, the wind goes out of Jocelyn’s sails. Somewhere at the back of her brain, though, there’s a tantalizing connection happening between Maggie and the removal of knickers… Bloody hell.

Forcing herself to come back to the thread, Jocelyn begrudgingly admits that Maggie could just as easily have brought the Latimers up, uninvited, to the house. She wouldn’t put it past her. Showing up at the front door, grieving Latimers in tow. Or worse, traipsing through the back garden. But she didn’t. Still, Jocelyn really does need to get a lock for that gate; more and more strangers are using the clifftop path all the time. She exhales, resigned. She never has been able to stay angry with Maggie for long, infuriating populist do-gooder that she may well be.

Sensing a thaw as Jocelyn’s fists unclench and her shoulders slide visibly down from her earlobes, Maggie gestures to the empty chair by the door. “Sit down for a few minutes?”

Jocelyn does, but only just. “I can’t stay.” Best not get too comfortable in case an escape becomes necessary.

“And I can’t invite you. I’ve got to get back to work.” Maggie gestures to the open Word document on her computer. “So,” she ventures to the heart of the matter, “what did you tell them? The Latimers?”

“I told them no.”

“Why?!”

Jocelyn raises a sardonic eyebrow, referring to their conversation of yesterday afternoon. “We’ve done this bit already.”

“But they need someone with your skills. Your experience. You know them, this community. Who better?”

Jocelyn is unmoved, so Maggie tries one more approach, knowing full well that Jocelyn is both a wildly successful beneficiary and, thus, committed champion of their ancient British legal system’s pupillage tradition: “Their barrister, Ben? He’s smart. Keen. But young. He could stand to learn a thing or two.”

This tempts her. Maggie can tell by the way Jocelyn purses her lips and looks over at the far wall, inhaling to consider the idea. She’s almost got her.

Then Jocelyn exhales wearily. “Maggie, stop pestering me. I’m not doing it.” She stops, considers, and then finally admits, “It’s not that I don’t want to.” She pauses just slightly before saying, so quietly that Maggie almost doesn’t hear her, “I can’t.”

Maggie leans back in her chair, absorbing what it’s taken for Jocelyn to make this admission. And then she feels a little pang of guilt: She hasn’t checked in with Jocelyn for quite awhile. They don’t run into each other that much around town. Occasionally at the library, or the grocery store. And since Jack… She knows Jocelyn blames her. Well, if not her, personally, then the industry she represents. And she can’t disagree. They all fucked up, and by the time Maggie tried to put it right, the damage was irreparable.

And while all that was happening, she had been rocked off her game by that Susan Wright person. Which is partly how the Jack Marshall story got so out of hand in the first place. If she’d been keeping closer tabs on Oliver…

Jocelyn doesn’t exactly welcome visitors up to the house, in any case. And Maggie’s been so busy at work. She’s also doubled her efforts with Lil, whom she had just started seeing a few months before they found Danny’s body. Poor Lil, she didn’t quite know what she had signed up for. To be fair, though, neither had Maggie; it’s not like she could’ve predicted the murder of an eleven year-old boy in this sleepy little seaside town, or the media shit storm that descended upon her. Upon them all.

Maggie looks back at Jocelyn. Ice blue again meets flinty slate, but the anger of a few moments ago has melted away to reveal the underlying affection and respect that these two women have for each other. A deep, abiding friendship. Tattered and frayed, to be sure. But here they are, anyway.

Maggie inhales sharply. She knows what it has cost Jocelyn to confide in her, to admit her vulnerability, and she nods almost imperceptibly: This information is meant for her, and her alone. She leans forward, tempted to reach for Jocelyn’s hand, to thank her for this gift of intimacy—even after Maggie had breached hers with the Latimers. But she doesn’t.

“I didn’t realize it had gotten that bad. Your eyes.”

Jocelyn shakes her head. “Oh, day to day is fine. I get the injections, and they seem to be doing what they’re supposed to do. But I can’t read nearly as much or for as long as I’d like. And a trial, Maggie...” Jocelyn’s mind’s eye turns to the stacks of files still on her dining room table from her last brief, more than three years ago now, and she just wants to cry from overwhelm and frustration. “I won’t be able to do it.”

“Look,” Maggie urges, “I’ll help. I can read to you. Files, statements, whatever else you’ll need.”

Jocelyn shakes her head. “That would hardly be appropriate, and you know it.” Talk about a conflict of interest: a journalist reading aloud to the prosecution confidential briefs of the trial she’s meant to be covering. Oh, my! “Plus, I imagine you’ll have your hands full here.”

Maggie concedes, on both counts. The impending trial, the climax of the biggest story she’s covered since leaving London, is drawing national interest. She’s put off her retirement (or is it resignation? She’s not really sure.) to guarantee it gets covered properly. Respectfully. Ethically. She owes it to Beth and Mark. She’s holding her shrinking newsroom together with sticky tape and paperclips—when she can afford them. And she’s been on the receiving end of a rape threat for her efforts. The Boy Wonder has potential, but he’s a decided pain in the arse, going rogue during the investigation last year and now wanting to live blog the whole bloody trial. She rubs the throbbing spot on the crown of her head. And on top of all that, she suspects Lil’s about to call it quits, despite her efforts. She can’t really blame her. Maybe she should just put them both out of their misery and end it first?

She returns to the problem at hand. “What about that idea of a team? To help you. How many people would you need?”

Jocelyn shakes her head no, refusing to even consider it.

“Christ, Jocelyn,” exclaims Maggie, “you’re going blind, you’re not dying! You _want_ to do it, so let’s figure out—”

“Stop pushing, Maggie!” Jocelyn snaps impatiently.

Jocelyn’s right: She is pushy. In advocacy of other people. That’s what makes her so damn good at her job. But maybe if she had turned that skill, that determination, into pushing for her own happiness, she’d have called Jocelyn Knight out on her horse shit fifteen years ago.

“You can’t just sit up there by yourself, brooding. The Latimers need you!” She’s starting to repeat herself, and even she’s tired of the sound of her own voice.

With that, Jocelyn is done. “Right.” She rises and opens Maggie’s office door. “Get some ice on that,” she advises, referring to the sore spot on the top of Maggie’s head, and then starts down the stairs.

“Life doesn’t have to be so bloody difficult,” Maggie calls out to her. Jocelyn pauses only briefly on the bottom step before throwing back her shoulders, tossing her chin high into the air, and heading defiantly out into the day that’s already gone half-three.

And Maggie’s honestly not sure whom she’s trying to convince, Jocelyn or herself.


End file.
